The corner of Gladden and West Main streets soon will be home to a new highway historical marker.

According to a press release from the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the marker will commemorate a unique event in history: the shift in U.S. policy towards recruiting blacks into the military.

It happened in Washington in April of 1863, when the Union Army equipped about 100 African American men to help defend Washington during a siege of the town.

After the siege of Washington, Col. Edward A. Wild was given the role of recruiting escaped slaves and traveled to New Bern in May of 1863 to begin recruiting for what became the 1st N.C. Colored Volunteers (later designated the 35th Regiment U.S. Colored Troops).

“The men were enlisted prior to formation in New Bern of the 1st N.C. Colored Volunteers in July 1863, following President Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the first Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. No African Americans had been recruited prior to that date. But some Union commanders already used escaped slaves for various forms of military labor and others employed formerly enslaved and free blacks as spies and scouts for the Union,” the release stated.

Abolitionists viewed the recruitment as an opportunity for escaped slaves to help bring an end to slavery by defeating the confederacy, while Union commanders saw it as a way to prevent slave owners from using escapees from being used by slave owners to fight the soldiers from the North, the release continued.

The marker will be officially unveiled at an April 1 dedication ceremony that will include remarks by historian David Cecelski, N.C. African American Heritage Commission Director Michelle Lanier, Wanda Hunt McLean, president of the Northeast N.C. Underground Railroad Foundation and Leesa Jones, founder of the Washington Waterfront Underground Railroad Museum.

For several years, Jones has collected local African American history, which resulted in the Washington waterfront’s designation as a site on the Underground Railroad’s Network to Freedom by the National Park Service, as well as the creation of the Washington Waterfront Underground Railroad Museum in the Seaboard Coastline caboose that sits on the grounds of the Washington Civic Center. The museum opened in 2015.

The public is invited to attend the dedication ceremony in the civic center at 2 p.m. and marker unveiling on the grounds at 3 p.m.